Abstract: Strategic positioning is the core of enterprise management, and enterprise niche is the core of strategic positioning. In recent years, with the acceleration of economic globalization, China’s enterprises have gradually participated in global competition through cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), but there are numerous failure cases. The common problem is how to choose the right M&A enterprise and solve the conflicts of business, management and culture faced by its globalization strategy. When Lenovo bought IBM’s global PC business, there was widespread pessimism about the direction of the merger. Lenovo was a nobody in the international market at that time, while IBM was the founder of PC and the leader of global information technology. However, through the painful integration process, Lenovo has achieved the global embedded replication of their successful models and become an important cornerstone of the source of profits. This study finds that Lenovo’s organizational ambidexterity of research and development (R&D) promotes the space expansion of Enterprise niche in three stages, which brings continuous business ecological advantages in the world, and is an important reason for the success of cross-border M&A.
The more similar the demand for resources, the more similar the product technology and the market, the higher the overlap of the niche and the more intense the competition. Fierce competition leads to the separation of enterprise ecological niche, and enterprises can easily obtain business ecological advantages. Foreign scholars put forward strategic niche management, niche width, technological niche and other perspectives to study the development and evolution of enterprise niche. These studies provide useful enlightenment. However, there are also two gaps: (1) more theoretical and empirical studies are needed for cross-border M&A of emerging industry enterprises; (2) lack of in-depth and systematic research on the space expansion and life cycle of enterprise niche. Therefore, this study adopts case study method and takes the longitudinal development history of Lenovo Cross-border complex embedded R&D organization as the research object, to explore the evolution rules of enterprise niche.
In view of the above gaps, the longitudinal case study method is adopted in this study for three reasons. Firstly, the research question of this study is to discuss "how" to realize the expansion of niche space in each stage of enterprise R&D, which is conducive to building theoretical model. Secondly, this study is an exploratory study. Lenovo niche space expansion and life cycle are complex and multi-faceted phenomena, and relevant factors have not been completely determined. Therefore, it is difficult to achieve research objectives by adopting quantitative research methods, while analytical induction is more suitable. Thirdly, this study adopts longitudinal study, which can observe the relatively complete development process and some key turning points of Lenovo’s R&D organization.
Through the evolution process of Lenovo R&D organization, this study systematically reveals that the reason for the success of Lenovo’s cross-border M&A is that Lenovo occupies the appropriate enterprise niche and continuously expands its space. It identifies the process characteristics, results, models and life cycle tracks of enterprise niche space expansion. The deep reason of enterprise niche evolution lies in the three stages of complex nesting process of R&D organizational ambidexterity promoting enterprise niche evolution. The conclusion helps to promote the successful space development of enterprise niches through Cross-border merger and acquisition, and to enhance the global sustainable development for the companies from emerging market such as China. The theoretical and practical implications are as follows:
First, the process model of enterprise niche space expansion reveals the evolution process of enterprise niche separation -- partial overlap -- separation and embedded replication. It develops and enriches the theoretical and empirical research on enterprise niche evolution from the micro level. Strategic niche management faces the problem of how to accelerate the transformation from the original niche to a large scope. Lenovo and IBM had occupied different basic niches in the PC field for a long time, and have their respective comparative advantages. This case shows the transformation process from the combination of the two niches to a wide range.
Second, the life cycle of enterprise niche is systematically revealed. The life cycle of enterprise niche is divided into three stages: creation, development and maturity. After entering the mature stage, the enterprise niche may develop in six different directions: self-renewal, reconfiguration, merger and reorganization, replication, recession, and retirement. Previous scholars’ discussions have provided meaningful references for this study, however, there is no in-depth and systematic study on the life cycle of enterprise niche.
Third, it reveals the deep reason of enterprise niche evolution -- the complex nesting process of R&D organizational ambidexterity, which is conducive to deepening the theory of organizational ambidexterity. In the past decade, researches on organizational ambidexterity have shown an explosive growth. However, previous studies have not provided answers on how the interface between application and exploration is managed. The three modes discussed in this study can guide the interface management between enterprise application and exploration. On the other hand, existing literature ignores the external stakeholders of enterprises and focuses on the role of internal executives in the process of organizational ambidexterity, as well as the role of organizational ambidexterity at the level of corporate execution. This study analyzes the complex embedded process of organizational ambidexterity in multinational R&D organizations from the perspective of M&A of global competitors and reveals the relationship between it and the evolution of enterprise niche.
The research results have important practical reference value for emerging industry enterprises to successfully realize transnational M&A and improve the global sustainable development ability. Practical significance of this study is to guide enterprises in emerging industrial countries such as China, through the analysis complex embedded process of R&D organizational ambidexterity, take different long-term based niche advantage complementary businesses to conduct Cross-border M&A. Enterprise niche separation and embedded global replication brings the sustainable development of the innovation ability and competitive advantage. It has important reference value for the enterprise development. In 2015, Lenovo acquired MOTOROLA’s mobile phone business. Although it obtained MOTOROLA’s smart phone patents and global market channels, its market shares in China and in the world showed an unexpected decline trend. The reason is that at the time of M&A, the enterprise niche of MOTOROLA mobile phones is in the middle and low-end market in the world, which overlaps with the basic niche of Lenovo’s original mobile phone brand, leading to the intensification of competition and the reduction of resource utilization efficiency in the process of business integration.

Key words: enterprise niche, organizational ambidexterity, competitive advantage, cross-border M&A, strategy management